That night, the first night in her own room, all alone, Grace can't sleep. She remembers Thanos snapping, the world going white, everyone turning to dust, then the fear that Nat would go, leave her too. That her father wouldn't come back.

That Peter wouldn't.

Out of all her losses, that is the one that hurts the most. The loss of Vision and Wanda pains her deeply, but there's a sort of comfort in the fact that they're both gone, one not left to grieve over the other. The look of peace on Wanda's face as she faded away said it all. Bucky and Sam — and she was closer with the latter — send a pang through her chest, also making her hurt for Steve, despite the resentment between himself and her father; he's still family. May hurts her too, and so do Ned and MJ, even though she never really knew them. And she aches for Harley and his mom — and Hannah — as he lost his sister. Everyone else, she either didn't know at all or knew briefly, surface-ly. She can only think on them with sadness, wish she got to know them better, hurt for those who miss them.

But Peter. Peter was her normal, ironically. He was her future. He was her first love, and, more likely than not, her only love. And losing him feels like something has been ripped out of her, leaving a gaping, jagged hole where he'd been.

He's practically everywhere in the compound, wherever she turns. He's on the couch, watching Merlin with her, laughing at Arthur and Merlin bickering. He's in the kitchen, raiding the fridge, calling back to Grace and asking if she wants anything. He's on the ceiling, waiting for her to come back in the room so he can try to scare her, even though it never works. He's hanging from a web, upside down, watching her draw or reading to her, doing funny voices for every character, making her laugh. He's halfway down the stairs, saying goodbye a hundred times and then running back up for just one more kiss, one more hug, one more, "I love you."

He's even in the living room sometimes, fighting with her, exasperated, frustrated, angry, but never saying anything mean, anything to hurt her, no matter how much his voice is raised to combat her own volume. He's stopping the fight right in the middle to calm them both down so they can actually talk about it instead of just shouting over each other, and he's hugging her and reminding her — and himself, really — that it isn't the end, just a little bump in the road, and they're going to get over it together.

His hand in his her hand and his lips are on her lips and he is in her arms and always, always in her head, just where exactly being the only question — the front or the back of her mind.

On her wall is a cork board that Tony bought her for her last birthday. And pinned to it are pictures, printed or drawn, memories, most of them of Peter. The postcard he got her from the Washington Monument, the picture she drew of him that day on the balcony, their homecoming dance, a picture she took of him asleep in the middle of a movie because he told her adamantly that he wouldn't fall asleep and then he did, and more of the two of them or just him or him and Ned or, in one case, MJ too. On one pin, the necklace he got her for her fifteenth birthday hangs, the words on it illegible from here, but Grace has them memorized.

'There I was, way off my ambitions, getting deeper in love every minute, and all of a sudden I didn't care.'

And she was, wasn't she? The way she thought her life was going to go, the way she'd planned her future with what she had, trying to ignore all her wishful fantasies, and he'd just dived right into the middle of it all, making waves and ripples. He made it so easy to fall for him, to want to talk him and be with him. And all of a sudden, he was her new normal. The geeky teenage boy with spider powers became her new normal, her best connection to the outside world that she would've been living in if things were different. But if things were different, she wouldn't've had him. And then she found herself not wanting to change things all that much anymore. She found herself not caring about the rest of the world and how it cared about her — at the very least, not as much. She was too in love to notice.

Love often gets stronger with time, and theirs did. She loved him more, but it became deeper than that. Something solid, something real, something... older. Something that knew little faults and irritations, that had arguments, small and big, but withstood it all anyway, that got stronger because of those things, once they were worked through. It was a team. And to lose it, just like that...

She gets out of bed, and, with shaking hands, puts on the necklace, even though she's already wearing the shrapnel necklace from her father.

She looks at the cork board, at the pictures, at his smiling face, and sees it fading away. Ash. Dust. Blown away before she can catch him, save him. Tears well up in her eyes, and she begins taking the pictures down, not wanting to see them anymore, but she does it with care so they don't rip.

When she has them all in her hands, she moves towards her nightstand, and The Great Gatsby catches her eye on the bookshelf. She grabs that too, puts it in the nightstand drawer with everything else. The picture he sent on the bus on the way to D.C., her favorite picture, is in a little frame on the nightstand itself. She grabs it, starts to put it with the others, but stops. She doesn't want to see his face and yet she does. She wants to talk to him. Even if he won't talk back.

"Peter..." she whispers, a thousand words ready to pour out of her. She sighs, sitting on her bed. "This is stupid. This is entirely stupid. I know you're not here. I know you can't hear me, and you're not gonna talk back. I know that." She pauses, looks at his face, imagines him gently teasing her for talking to a picture if he could actually hear her right now — or maybe he wouldn't do that. Maybe he'd tell her it was okay, that he understood and she wasn't stupid at all, not to him. Maybe he'd do a bit of both. Tears blur her vision, and she blinks them away, takes a shaky breath. "But I don't know what else to do now.

I need you, Peter. I don't know what to do without you. And I-I know there was a time in my life where you weren't in it. I know that. But now that I've known you — that I've loved you — I don't know what to do. You were it for me, you know? And I know that sounds crazy, but it's true. There's no one else like you, Peter Parker... even if I could go out and meet him..." She heaves another sigh. "Well, I... I guess I'll... give you an update on everything. Say it out loud to try to work through it in my head...

"So. I kinda fought Thanos in Wakanda with the others. He told me about you, said you corrected him when he called you an insect. Then he, like, threw me halfway across the forest, but it's fine. And you already know that he won, so..." She clears her throat, continues. "Anyway, Dad came back with Nebula — she's a cyborg, he told me all about her — and he was really dehydrated and everything, but he's okay now. The others killed Thanos and tried to use the Stones to bring everybody back, but he destroyed the Stones, so... no dice, I guess.

"Anyway, Mom and Dad just got married at the compound — it was small, so you didn't miss all that much — and their honeymoon is a few days alone in our new house, unpacking. I'm at the compound still, packing up my room and stuff. Trying to sleep, though that's not working very well so far. I might... I might try again though. This has... helped, actually.

"So, if, by some small chance, you can actually hear me, I love you. And I promise I won't ever forget you." She sets the picture back on her nightstand, crawling under the covers. "Goodnight." She looks at him for a moment, then reaches out again and lay the picture down on the table. Turning over, she curls up and manages to sleep for a while.

~~~~

Tony and Pepper worry for Grace. Immensely.

She liked the new house, of course, and she liked all the decorating Pepper did, which was also to be expected. She settled in quite nicely, decorated her own room, though she didn't paint anything on the walls like she had in her old room.

Still, her new room is quite similar to the old one.

The walls are still white, as it's basically standard. She kept the same bedding, even though Tony said he would buy her a new one. She liked her old desk, and her old dresser, and her old bookshelf, and her easel, so she kept all those too. And yet the room just seems so... bare.

There's only a picture of Harley, a picture of Nat, and a few pictures from the wedding on her cork board. And that's it. No more pictures in the whole room.

No more Peter.

Tony and Pepper know she wouldn't throw them all away, but they don't know where she's keeping them — not that it's any of their business, without her actually telling them. And it's clear that won't be happening any time soon, as she refuses to even say Peter's name. They brought him up once or twice — even Nat has, when Grace occasionally visits her at the compound, driven there by Happy — but she won't talk about him; she just leaves the room. And she won't even look at the picture Tony has of Peter in the kitchen, on one of the floating shelves next to the sink.

It's one of Tony's favorites; Peter has a goofy look on his face, trying to do bunny ears behind Tony's head but doing them way too high. Tony himself is sort of smiling, also doing bunny ears behind Peter's head (at the right height) as they hold Peter's Stark Industries certificate between them upside down. Tony's actual favorite picture of Peter has Grace in it too, but he figured that it would hurt too much for her to pass by it practically everyday.

It's the one taken at Grace's sweet sixteen, when Peter smushed cake all over Grace's face and she instantly retaliated, the picture taken when the cake she threw at him was midair. Peter, in the foreground with her, was bracing for the impact, while, behind them, May was ducking out of the way, Pepper, Rhodey, and Happy were laughing in shock, and Tony was just laughing as the camera, on a timer, went off. It was originally supposed to be a picture of them all with the cake before Grace blew out the candles, but it turned out so much better that way.

Then again, his favorite might be the one where they were out in the snow, ganging up on Rhodey in a snowball fight, the two of them laughing while Rhodey pretended to be annoyed. Right after Pepper took the picture Rhodey hit Peter square in the face with a snowball and Grace fell over laughing.

Meanwhile, Pepper's favorite is decidedly the one of Grace and Peter outside on the grounds in the springtime. Grace was trying to teach Peter how to make a flower crown after learning the skill herself because she had nothing better to do. She was laughing at him while she guided his hands, and he looked intensely concentrated. Pepper had taken it herself, and she told Tony it was her favorite once when they were talking about Peter. They talk about him often, usually in relation to Grace and her apparent, yet closed-off grief.

They've noticed her going outside at night, holding what they believe is a picture in her hands. She'll sit on the porch steps for a while, and then they'll hear the door open and close, her footsteps going up the stairs, and then her bedroom door will creak open and shut as she tries to be quiet. It's concerning, but asking her about it could make it worse and almost be like invading her privacy (especially seeing as she isn't putting herself in any sort of harm). If she doesn't want to talk about it, she won't. End of story.

And they're exactly right: Grace doesn't want to talk about it. What Tony and Pepper don't know is that she goes outside to talk to — or, at, really — Peter, and the last thing she wants is for them to find out.

She believes they'll think she's crazy — she certainly feels crazy sometimes — and they'll just be worried about her. Plus, she doesn't want to explain it; she can't. All she knows is that it helps lessen the ache for him, the intense longing to just have him back that she feels half the time, thinking about him. It usually hits her at night, when she's not distracted by Tony trying to get her out in the garage to help him tinker or Pepper trying to get her to help cook or tend their little garden or whatever else she thinks might be fun for Grace.

When it does hit her in the day, though, she adds to the box of pictures and memories in her nightstand, the one she keeps closed most of the time, that almost pains her to open.

She draws him. She draws him from pictures or even just how she remembers him, and then she'll look and see how it compares to the real thing, worried she'll forget exactly what he looks like if she would happen to lose those pictures. Tears stain many of them, especially the drawings.

The visits to the compound are somehow the worst, even though Nat is there.

Peter is still written all over that place, and everyone there besides Nat (when they are there) just looks at her with pity and sadness, especially Steve. Nat makes it better, though Grace can tell she's tiptoeing around subjects in conversation and trying to comfort her without directly mentioning it. She pretends to be happy, so that Grace will be able to be, but Grace can tell it's an act. She's going to convince her to drop it the next time she's there, let Nat know that being okay in this situation doesn't make sense at all, so she doesn't have to try to be.

Grace is just about to give up putting on that brave face herself for her parents. It's exhausting, but she doesn't want them to be worried. She doesn't want them to try to talk to her about what she's feeling.

She only talks to Peter about it, almost every night for a while. Sometimes she tells him how much she misses him, sometimes she gives him updates on what's going on, sometimes both. She still knows he isn't hearing her, and he won't talk back. She just wishes he would.

She wishes she could look at a picture of the Washington Monument and not feel a pang in her chest. She wishes the only emotions she could feel while thinking of The Great Gatsby were an anger towards Tom and Daisy — especially Daisy — and a sadness for Gatsby and Gatsby only (and maybe Nick too), and not for what she's lost. She wishes she could just think about finishing Merlin without feeling guilty about it, without wanting to cry seeing it in her 'Currently Watching.' She wishes she could walk through the kitchen without having to look at the floor, lest she see that picture and start crying while her parents are there.

She wishes the gaping hole in her chest would start closing already.